International Health Policies in the news today 76

Dear Colleagues,

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The AU summit in < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Kampala closed with a clear commitment for child and maternal health. The 2001 Abuja financial commitments were reiterated and more measures announced to increase child and maternal survival in Africa. Leadership is a crucial component of any health system. Many people in the world and in Africa praise the African leaders for this courageous declaration and hope this will now be matched by action.

 

Enjoy your reading.

 

David Hercot, Kristof Decoster, Josefien Van Olmen, Basile Keugong & Wim Van Damme

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Global Health

1. TMIH – Per diems undermine health interventions, systems and research in Africa: burying our heads in the sand

Valéry Ridde; http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123594897/abstract

The author opens the debate on the “perdiemitis” that has become an accepted fact of society in developing countries, not without impacting motivation and efficiency though.

2. KFF – African Leaders Agree To Expand Maternal Health Campaign As AU Summit Concludes

http://globalhealth.kff.org/Daily-Reports/2010/July/28/GH-072810-AU-Summit.aspx Although terrorism captured the headlines at the AU summit, participants nevertheless took eight new resolutions to address maternal and child deaths across the continent. Child Health and Global health advocates were cheering. Let’s see whether African governments will now live up to their commitments.

3. BMJ – Helping poorer countries make locally informed health decisions

Kalipso Chalkidou, Ruth Levine, Andrew Dillon; http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/341/jul16_1/c3651

Although the authors offer an insightful analysis of the influence of international partners on local development priority setting, their suggestion to overcome this by turning the widely recognized UK based NICE concept into an international organization is not entirely convincing.

4. Globalhealthpolicy – Institutionalizing justice: a framework convention on global health ?

http://www.globalhealthpolicy.net/?p=59

The current fragmentation of health aid is counterproductive, we need to move towards an integrated approach focused around basic rights, Sridhar and Gostin argue.

5. RAND – Intellectual Property and Developing Countries: A review of the literature

Emmanuel Hassan, Ohid Yaqub, Stephanie Diepeveen; http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2010/RAND_TR804.pdf  (PDF 540 Kb)

This literature review presents the advantages and disadvantages of TRIPS for developing countries.

AIDS

6. The science and practice of HIV prevention

The Lancet; Full Text

If there was any consensus at the Vienna AIDS conference, it was no doubt on the importance of prevention as a strategy to defeat AIDS.

7. Obama accused over Aids funding

Sarah Boseley; http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/sarah-boseley-global-health/2010/jul/22/obama-administration-aids

Sarah Boseley is recovering from her excruciating “marathon” at the AIDS conference. She analyzes the AIDS funding crisis on her blog and argues that perhaps Obama is not the one to be singled out for blame. Others like Berlusconi (who always makes a nice villain, even in good times) have withdrawn much more from previous commitments. Most of all, AIDS activists need to remain united if they want to secure funding. Editors from Plos medicine go even further and plead for more cooperation between HIV, child and maternal strategies and advocates.

Aid

8. CGD – The End of ODA (II): The Birth of Hypercollective Action – Working Paper 218

Jean-Michel Severino and Olivier Ray; http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1424253

Download (PDF, 1.34 MB)       

“Severino and Ray use the lessons of the Paris Declaration—the first large-scale effort to coordinate hypercollective action—as a starting point for envisioning a new conceptual framework to manage the complexity of current international collaboration”

9. HPP – The relationships between foreign aid, HIV and government health spending

Jeremy Youde; http://heapol.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/czq030v1

The author studied the link between HIV prevalence and amounts of aid funding. He also looked at the relation between AIDS-aid and Domestic AIDS funding and found evidence of an inverse relation.

10.    All africa.Com – Niger: Food Crisis in the Sahel – Real Problem, False Solutions

Tidiane Kassé; http://allafrica.com/stories/201007291006.html

Once again Niger is struggling to feed its population after a disastrous harvest earlier this year. The author analyzes the root causes.

Russian Health Care reform

11.    BMJ news – Russia embarks on £10bn reform of its “deplorable” health system

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/341/jul26_1/c4025

Every country in the world seems to be embarking on health care reform these days. American and Chinese health care reforms have been covered before in this newsletter. Now, the Russians kickstart their own reform process. BMJ News reports.